confirmation
BY MEJDULENE BERNARD SHOMALI
a doctor points to gray areas
see these gray areas
once my father was in full color
now he has lost some things
he worries the rosary
wakes screaming with night terrors
a priest sighs حرام a good man
baba’s taken to wearing
the virgin mary around his neck
a talisman a gold chain
anchored between awake & elsewhere
grief slouches his shoulders
at a wedding my father is missing
no one is leading the زفّة
& i can’t remember the entire سامر
just voices cracking
dipped heads & trembling beats
we find him singing most often
فلسطین تنادیني
serenading the summer country
its verdant landscape
burst & blown with color
soaked in fractured sounds
its rivers rushing him home
we sit in the kitchen
my mother laments how different he is
while he recites the periodic table
i tell the story of baba cooking corn
in microwave short minutes
just four in the husk
just four minutes of clarity
baba laughs when i tell it
a lesson he remembers
long enough to remember me
how he taught me these little things
each moment a balm against forget
